I had built a physical door between my two selves because I could not hold them both in the same room.

Upstairs lived Isaura Ellington, the modest wife, the woman who cleaned and served and endured, who let her husband believe he’d rescued her, who made herself small.

Downstairs lived Isaura Kingswell, who moved hundreds of millions across four countries and answered to no one.

For eight years I had ridden between those two women in a hidden elevator, becoming one at the top and the other at the bottom, and I had never once let them meet, because if they met — if the woman who owned everything ever looked directly at the woman on the kitchen floor — the whole arrangement of my marriage would collapse in an instant.

That was the real function of the hidden door.

It was not to keep my work secret from Ferdinand.